For residents of South Africa’s townships, the ballot box has never felt this unpredictable. When voters go to the polls on 4 November 2026, the outcome will decide who runs the local governments that deliver water, housing and services to their daily lives. In Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, communities that once voted overwhelmingly for a single party now find themselves among the most electorally competitive places in the country.
That is the central finding of an analysis by Thembelani Mazibuko, a researcher on coalitions at ACCORD, who uses the 2024 National and Provincial Elections as a window into what the local government elections may hold. The 2024 vote was a watershed. For the first time, no party won a majority in the National Assembly, and the African National Congress lost its majorities in the KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Northern Cape provincial legislatures. The country moved from one-party dominance nationally and in every province to a system where the largest party secured only forty per cent of the national vote.
Nowhere did the ground shift more dramatically than in KwaZulu-Natal. The uMkhonto weSizwe Party, less than a year old on election day, took 45.35 per cent of the provincial vote, while the ANC collapsed from 55.66 per cent in 2019 to 16.99 per cent, and the Economic Freedom Fighters fell from 9.71 per cent to 2.26 per cent. The numbers suggest the new party grew by drawing support from both. For communities across the province, the practical consequence is stark: using the 2024 results as a baseline, only twenty of forty-four municipalities would have a majority government, fourteen led by the MKP, two by the ANC and four by the Inkatha Freedom Party. The remaining twenty-four would need coalitions of at least two parties to govern.
Mazibuko outlines two possible paths for those hung municipalities. One would localise a Government of National Unity style arrangement, bringing together the ANC, Democratic Alliance, IFP and smaller parties. The other, an ANC-MKP grand coalition, is theoretically possible because the two parties share voters and have ideological overlap, but Mazibuko judges it unlikely given the relationship between their leaderships. Under that scenario, most municipalities would fall to an ANC-MKP arrangement, with a minority under IFP control, partnering with the DA where needed.
Gauteng tells a similar story of fragmentation, and it is felt most visibly in its high-profile metros. After the 2021 local elections, only one municipality, Midvaal, was won outright by a single party, and the coalition running the City of Johannesburg currently consists of seven parties. Based on the 2024 results, only one municipality was won outright, and the arrival of newer parties is expected to accelerate the trend. The MKP, which took ten per cent of the provincial vote, polls at 11.5 per cent in Ekurhuleni and 12.5 per cent in Johannesburg, while the Patriotic Alliance, though not new, grew to two per cent. Provincial politics adds another layer: Gauteng is governed by a coalition that excluded the DA but includes the IFP, RISE Mzansi, the PA and Al Jama-ah, and if that arrangement extends to local level it would replicate itself in the metros. Polls suggest ActionSA may be the kingmaker, a party that in Tshwane has already governed with both the DA-Freedom Front Plus bloc and the ANC-EFF bloc. DA mayoral hopeful Helen Zille has not ruled out an ANC-DA grand coalition, which would be the most stable option with fewer parties, though it would depart from the current Government of Provincial Unity.
By contrast, the Western Cape stands apart. Coalition politics there date back to the 2000s, and hung councils doubled from eight in 2016 to sixteen in 2021, but they have been concentrated in smaller municipalities. Cape Town, home to sixty-six per cent of the province’s residents, has not had a coalition since after the 2011 elections. The DA’s provincial support held steady at 55.3 per cent in 2024 against 55.45 per cent in 2019, while the ANC fell from 28.65 per cent to 19.55 per cent, suggesting it is the ANC’s vote that is fragmenting, largely to the PA, whose share rose to 7.8 per cent, and to a lesser extent the EFF. Based on the 2024 results, twelve municipalities would lack a single-party majority, the same as in 2006 and 2011, so no dramatic increase in hung councils is expected. Where coalitions are needed, the DA has mostly worked well with the FF+ and the African Christian Democratic Party, while the PA has governed some municipalities alongside the ANC.
Coalitions, after all, are not new to South Africa. KZN was governed by an ANC-IFP coalition as far back as 1999, the original Government of National Unity marked the start of democracy, and the 2016 local elections produced the first hung councils in the Gauteng metros, followed by a record sixty-six hung councils in 2021. What the 2024 results portend, Mazibuko concludes, is more and more complex coalitions in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal as newer parties take market share from the ANC, while the Western Cape will likely replicate previous election cycles. For the residents of those municipalities, the outcome will determine not just who holds power, but how their towns and cities are governed for years to come.